O, and he has a third weakness
which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never
been taught, and he's well on for thirty, and he
paints."
"How?" I asked.
"Rather well, I think," was the reply. "That's the
annoying part of it. See for yourself. That panel is
his."
I stepped toward the window. It was the old familiar
room, with the tables set like a Greek II, and the
sideboard, and the aphasic piano, and the panels on the
wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from the
river, Enfield's ships among the ice, and the huge
huntsman winding a huge horn; mingled with them a few
new ones, the thin crop of a succeeding generation, not
better and not worse. It was to one of these I was
directed: a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly
with the palette-knife; the colour in some parts
excellent, the canvas in others loaded with mere clay.
But it was the scene and not the art or want of it that
riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand and
scrub and wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-
hued and smooth expanse of a lagoon, enclosed by a wall
of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean.
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